The 10 Hottest New Cars at the Shanghai Auto Show (and 5 Duds)

For those of you who haven’t read the news in the past 20 years, here’s an update: China is on the ascent. This is evidenced not only in the nation’s manufacture and export of off-gassing Target tchotchkes, counterfeit luxury goods, and global pandemics. It also takes the form of an insatiable home-market appetite for durable goods like solar cells, 40-story apartment buildings, and—more to the point for this column—cars, for which it is now Earth’s largest market, defeating last century’s consistent champ: America.

At Stick Shift, we love cars. (Duh!) And since we follow the international car-convention circuit wherever it goes, we could hardly resist the opportunity to attend the exclusive press preview of this year’s Chinese Auto Show, which was held last week in Shanghai’s 30-zillion-square-foot Convention Exposition Prosperity Convocation Center. We didn’t get to hang with Victoria Beckham in China this year, but we were still able to bring you our breakdown of what was Sichuan spicy, and what was congealed congee.

10) Buick Riviera Concept

Buick has long been a major, and Imperial, player in China. This supple, if ponderously pill-shaped, hybrid attempts to update that appeal with wireless charging, wave-inspired flow, noise-canceling headrests (?!), and just enough weirdness to sneak onto this list.